Sebastian Coe appeared to be an on-demand president when he was first elected to head the World Athletics Federation. Practically in the hands of the once-superb runner, the man who brought London to the 2012 Olympics, a doping and corruption scandal exploded in the fall of 2015 that few believed Coe would survive politically. In the storm he managed to turn.
The Brit not only distanced himself from his predecessor Lamine Diack, who was later convicted of corruption, and whose Vice President he had been and whom he praised as a model for his actions when he was elected. As the investigation and trial unfolded, Coe reorganized the federation, formed an independent organization to investigate and sanction doping and corruption, the Athletic Integrity Unit, and cleaned up much of the sordid past by renaming the federation World Athletics.
Coe and the Russia-Ukraine question
Now he was elected to a third term of office without a dissenting vote and with only three abstentions. It’s not just looking back at the election results from back then that shows that the future of the association and the sport was on the razor’s edge eight years ago. Only 23 votes made the difference between Coe (115) and the former pole vaulter Sergej Bubka from Ukraine (92), who had delivered an almost excessive election campaign.
Now, at the federation’s congress ahead of the World Cup in Budapest, Bubka no longer ran for vice-president. Even when he was President of their National Olympic Committee, he drew criticism from Ukrainian athletes because he remained silent for a long time about the Russian army’s invasion. Now the portal “Inside The Games” reports that Bubka did business with oil and petrol in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Having the reputation of being a war profiteer made him intolerable.
Coe, on the other hand, has been confirmed as the brains and voice of world athletics. That means something. Eight years ago, Coe suspended the Russian federation for systematic doping and reinstated it after a year-long process. He gained experience with so-called neutral athletes from Russia who, because of their personal integrity, were allowed to take part in international competitions without using symbols of their state. And he has broken away from the mainstream of world sport, which at the request of Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, is ready to welcome athletes from Russia and Belarus back into the sport.
Michael Reinsch, Berlin Published/Updated: Recommendations: 6 Published/Updated: Michael Reinsch, Paris Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 7
Coe does not follow Bach’s argument that the exclusion is discrimination against athletes from the country of warmongers, but recognizes the impertinence of sending athletes from Ukraine to compete with athletes whose home country bombs their cities and theirs murdered friends and relatives. For this, Coe found an overwhelming majority of 192 out of 195 votes.
Bach’s term of office ends in two years. Then Coe, President of what is probably the most important Olympic sports association, could succeed him at the head of the IOC. What a difference to the situation eight years ago: again he is president on call.
